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Muslim American Taxpayer Reaction to SOTU 2015
Furthermore, Muslim Americans, like myself, may feel a little more included with a mention. However, I immediately cautioned myself that the reference resulted from the tragic Charlie Hebdo backlash.
For the issues that I cover as a blogger, governance and economics in the Middle East and North Africa region, I totally lost playing Bingo. The terms I chose (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Drones, and Diplomacy) did not pop up in the satisfying combination on my Bingo sheet. For those who literally track presidential remarks point for point, I invite you to look at Politifact, and judge for yourself whether the points are seriously wrong, or just different interpretations.
Obama focused more on domestic issues than foreign policy concerns by emphasizing college affordability, imploring big companies to create apprenticeships at home, and referencing our NASA program’s space experiments and hopes for exploring Mars. I counted more references to “middle-class economics”, “new jobs” and “employment” than “Middle East”, “Russia”, or “China”. Hopefully, this means increased funding for the kind of 21st century infrastructure that supports education as well as increased research and development — and not the scary weapons kind.
On that note, drones received a mention — but not its corollary: high civilian death toll in countries like Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Specifically, the targeted drone strikes accidentally targeted 142 children, according to watchdog Reprieve.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com